Last Sunday, in Cape Town, an African National Congress (ANC) Youth League member wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “100% Zuma” took to the podium and told ANC national chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota not to lecture the league about what they should wear.
Lekota had spoken out against the T-shirt and how it promoted tribalism and division in the ANC.
At the same meeting, a regional conference of the ANC, the majority of T-shirts bore President Thabo Mbeki’s face, without any accompanying message.
The flagrant and now familiar disrespect for Lekota followed drama on Saturday in Phalaborwa at the funeral of former ambassador to Indonesia Norman Mashabane, when some ANC supporters shouted down provincial chairperson and Premier Sello Moloto.
The premier was booed by young people who want him ousted as Limpopo chair and was forced to cut short his speech.
The events suggest a collapse of discipline in the party as a dirty succession battle compromises its leadership and no one is seen to be above the faction fights.
The mood ahead of the national conference in December is similar to that in the winter of 2005 when the ANC membership surprised the leadership and hijacked the policy discussion forum.
Members forced the leadership to discuss issues surrounding Zuma, who had just been relieved of his duties as deputy president of the country by Mbeki, and who had also stepped aside as ANC deputy chairperson.
The divisions are intractable and none of the leading candidates is prepared to back down, with key lobbyists for each believing they have a fair chance of winning the contest.
As one of the chief organisers of the Mbeki camp summed up the “irretrievable breakdown” to the Mail & Guardian: “It is too late to stop the contest now. If you look at the lists of the two camps, they are so diametrically opposed to each other that compromise will be very difficult.”
Mbeki supporters believe they are in the ascendancy and expect to surprise the “Umshini Wami brigade” at the conference.
They believe that the ANC membership has always been conservative and is unlikely to experiment with a new leader who brings so much controversy around his personal life and who is surrounded by a group of supporters and advisers from the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party that wants to take over and change the nature of the ANC.
ANC members will not allow such radical change, the Mbeki lobby believes.
Zuma supporters, on the other hand, believe that the work they have invested over the past few months is paying off. They expect support for him from all provinces, including the Eastern Cape, which nominated Mbeki.
Independent surveys put Zuma ahead of Mbeki in the presidency race. So confident is Zuma that he has already moved to the next leg of his campaign and is now travelling around the globe assuring investors that there would be no instability if he were elected ANC leader and even the country’s president.
Mbeki, meanwhile, has spent time making the most of an opportunity presented by Springboks winning the Rugby World Cup to consolidate his nation-building project.
So, who is left to lead the movement?
Lekota is seen as the Mbeki-camp campaign manager and is therefore routinely called names by the ANCYL such as Pop Idol contestant and a “factory fault”, despite his zealous, but fruitless, campaign to provide leadership in these troubled times.
Those close to him say he decided to play this role because secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe has failed in this respect. Motlanthe himself has been subject to attacks by Mbeki campaigners, who believe he has aligned himself with Zuma (he is second on Zuma’s list) and therefore failed to provide neutral leadership in the contest.
ANC spokesperson Tiyani Rikhotso refutes suggestions of a paralysis in leadership. “The leadership of the ANC remains in place, regardless of whichever lists their names are found in. The ANC constitution expects them to act in the best interests of the ANC as long as they are in office.”